October
SeptemberThe case for pace
I was fascinated by Aidan O’Brien’s reason for Camelot’s defeat in the English St Leger. He claimed he could have won if he had started one or preferably two pacemakers.
In Victoria, stewards demand that trainers advise if a horse will be ridden differently. This piece of useless information is irrelevant to me and I presume most punters.
We would all be better off with pacemakers as races would be truly run, thereby ensuring that the best horse on the day wins. If a trainer provides a pacemaker, then trainers of all the good horses in a race could benefit as I am intruiged as to how pacemakers can only help one horse.
Those pacemakers in Yeats’s Melbourne Cup certainly helped all the good stayers who rolled over the top of Yeats.
Until recently stewards just ensured that everything was done correctly re starting the correct horse and swabbing winners. Now we have an ongoing litany of allegedly fixed races, undesirables on track and more.
I have seen these so-called crooked races and there is no case to answer. I have seen many crook rides where I have had suspicions of jockeys pulling up horses but really, once the dismay and anger subsides, it is almost always just a case of poor judgment.
After all, these jockeys are only human and just like people in other jobs they occasionally make some very poor or very unlucky decisions. In their defence, these decisions must be made instantaneously.
Every race has its winners and losers but a bit of corruption or lack of care can be advantageous. I once took a trifecta with a horse I owned to run second and won $1800. The winner late returned a positive swab so I collected the prizemoney as well. That was a rare bit of luck which is still enjoyable 12 years later.
Let’s forget this "integrity" buzzword and return stewards to their original, invisible role where very little escaped their watchful eyes and racing was not publicly ridiculed as it is today.
Bendigo (Vic)